Abe's Story

I carry her on my shoulders. Her naked feet dangle beyond my neck and I feel an incredible fear. Beneath it, I’m not quite sure, but maybe a kind of anger, the kind of slow scarlet fire among rocks and coal. I can feel the weight of her body, which in absolute physical terms is barely anything but when reduced to an abstraction is like lead. She has no one else to carry her. The other kids, Sarah, Seabass, are like family, but likeness is only an approximation. The responsibility of blood lies with me alone.

It scares me.

She lies badly. She’ll tell me about her day while I eat and she’ll stare at my food but will never ask for a bite. And when I offer something, she’ll tell me that she just ate or that she’s full or that she doesn’t like soup. When I put to her bed, she’ll pretend to fall asleep in seconds and pretend that she has outgrown stories and lullabies so that I can rest a few extra minutes without any guilt.

Sometimes I imagine her dead. I see no body, no pale face or coffin, only a memo. A messenger running to me with bad news. There’s been an accident, a fatal disease, a lightning strike, an abstraction. I can see the grief, almost solid in its intensity, but also a kind of revelation and a lifting up of things, of things thrown off, of floatation. The world opens all at once and I am like the balloon in a child’s hand that has come untied and I am gone. I am cloud-matter.

I have dreams of this.

I am disgusted with myself. I awake in the deep night with stomach pains and I spend ten to fifteen minutes not crying. Sometimes I’ll go back to sleep, more often I’ll go to my sister’s bedside, kneel and stroke her hair and whisper wild apologies and promises and pleas for forgiveness, for the failure of an equal reciprocation of her love and inside me is this tearing--for does the unconscious slander? It does not. That sensation of selfish relief is true; and the unrealized anger. But how can I have these thoughts? I am all she has.

I am all she has.

---

The crystal in the vial casts a rainbow instead of a shadow, whose colors twist as I turn it. There is a certain wonder to the powers concentrated in something so slight. One of the older boys spots the vial and frowns. Norman Garp, third boy of the group that comes with me tonight; he cultures a special hatred for me.

“What’s that?” Says Stacy Sue. She casually puts her hand on my shoulder and leans in from behind. I slip the vial in my pocket. She is the principle of Norman’s hatred, the compound interest. She and her unrestrained and tempting beauty. But I am not tempted. They are only children in my eyes, she and Norman both.

“It’s nothing.”

“Can I see it?”

“I said it’s nothing.”

I take the boots I will wear tonight and I begin to lace them. Her hand slips down to my forearm. Norman stares at us from across the room and the lucky coin that he wears around his neck is in his mouth. I can imagine the anger in his brain, the desire to destroy me in front of Stacy Sue, to embarrass me. He goes on this trip to show me up. He declares it in front of the other giggling older girls and some of them even make eyes at him, but because Stacy Sue ignores him, he makes pacts within himself to overcome me. And Stacy Sue wants me to bring back souvenirs for the promise of a kiss that does not interest me. Children. Children.

“Stacy Sue, Sarah wants you in the kitchen.” Says another girl. She is one of her subordinates, so are they all. Beauty creates their hierarchy and Stacy Sue is a queen.

“Tell her to wait. I’ll be right there.”

“OK, but she said right now.” She looks on enviously the way that Stacy Sue’s hand moves over my hand, her slight hunched posture which tactically and perhaps unconsciously reveals exactly the right amount of cleavage. The boldness of god’s perfect creatures.

“You’d better go.” I tell her.

“Ugh, ever since that elf showed her how to cook she’s been going at it non-stop. It’s really annoying.”

“The food’s improved.”

“Yeah, the food’s improved but look at my hands! They get all wrinkled and they smell like onions.”

She shoves her hands to my face. I don’t say anything.

“I wouldn’t mind cooking for you though.” She says, sing-song.

“You already do.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” And I do know and I wonder what is this to her, what is it to see through those honey-drop hazel eyes? The bastard daughter of a nameless noble; her mother dead from birthing her. She tells people that it is like when a clam is destroyed to release its pearl, but beneath this pride is a fear like mine. “I can make something extra and we can eat it together by the temple steps.” Her eyes are forever hopeful and sometimes I can imagine them older, wrinkled by a life long lived together, but the vision does not last.

“You shouldn’t keep Sarah waiting.” I thread the last hole and admire the handiwork of the net I have fashioned.

“I’ll make that soup that you like OK? And we’ll eat it together before you leave.”

I make no reply, but she seems to understand. I know one day she will give up, and she knows too, but today she furrows her brow and saves her energy for another time.

Norman Garp sucks on his coin. The game goes on and I am tired.

---

In the night I put my sister to bed and administer her medicine.

“I don’t want you to go.” She says.

“I know.”

“I’m feeling better.” She offers. “Maybe I don’t need the medicine anymore.”

I shake my head and touch the tip of her nose. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Abe?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry for getting sick.”

I laugh. “That’s not anything you have to be sorry about.”

“I know. But if I wasn’t sick you wouldn’t have to go.”

I hear the kindling eaten in the fireplace. “Go to sleep.”

She closes her eyes. “Abe?”

“I’m here.”

“You’ll really come back right?” Her voice trembles slightly. A sudden thrill flows through me like blood through a straw. What if I really left? I see the road so clearly. No more responsibility. No more saving money for an education I can never realize. I see Seabass’s eyes, the disappointment in them, but the money was never for me. It’s too late for me. I see my sister’s eyes shut tight. This is real. This is faith of a kind I cannot betray. I lay my lips to her hair.

“Of course I will.” I whisper. “Where else could I go?”

Her breathing slows and sweet sleep overtakes her. Norman raps at the door.

“They’re here.”

---

We arrive at the outskirts of the village, just me and Norman because the other boys got scared and Norman did too, but Stacy Sue was there and hugged each of us and drew out courage from him. There are three adventurers with us, the man in armor is their leader, Harald, who goes by Hal and a man with a lazy eye and a man who wears gloves all the time.

The first day’s is easy. The forest is light and the weather, calm and mlid. We break for camp near sunset, by a small pond speckled with fallen leaves and pinecones.

Lazy-eye takes out a kind of lute and tunes it. The gloved-man scrapes dead skin from the sole of his foot with a porous stone. The man in armor stokes the fire. Norman Garp sits by me and watches the lute player and sucks on his coin. Lazy-eye plays slowly, testing the strings, then testing our patience, then settles into a natural ease. The man in armor hums to the beat; the gloved-man puts on his socks. The music grows soft and sweet and we watch the flames.

They dream of things to do with money. Dreams which are as geometrically pointless as their lives. They live in rays and arcs. Always the next job, the next payout, the next town, the next drink, whore, bed, trail, enemy, fight, breath. Lazy-eye tells me stories as we hike, unfinished, and without morals or beginnings. “Out here gangrene’ll kill ya. Feet rot, you know? Putrescence like old milk. You get yourself a pair of clean socks, every time you stop. Every time. Or, if you can get ‘em, like Courier here (the gloved-man) enchanted ones from a good clothier. Leave your feet looking prettier than a blushing bride the day before. Keep your boots clean, get new soles when they crack. Keep water out. Almost died once from a blister, pinky toe and big toe. God’s truth.” He stops and looks out into the trees, regarding the patchwork of sunlight between the foliage with an almost prophetic air. “A man’s feet is his freedom.” He says. “Right Courier?”

The gloved-man never says a word.

I wonder what Norman dreams. I see him and Stacy Sue holding hands, Stacy Sue in a white dress and Norman with a shy grin on his halfway handsome face. He draws the rope of flowers about her waist and binds the knot. He grows old with her; their faces become alike. He loves his children with an almost absurd ferocity, because he knows how hard it is without love. To have it inside him burning holes, like stars, and no one with which to share this light. I want Stacy Sue to love him to pieces, to make him more than whole, to suffuse him so completely that at last there is a blending of forms and colors. Total unity.

I want this for him, and I despise him. I hate him. I hate Lazy-eye and Courier and the man in armor. I am put near to what I cannot have. These lives they lead unattached and unmuzzled by anything. Here in this dark, by fire and music, separated from my shackles by ten thousand paces of wooded forestry, and still I see the chains.

“Hey, can I ask you something.” Norman sidles up next to me, coin between teeth. The others are asleep, and they trust me to keep watch and tend fire.

“You should sleep. You’re up next.”

“I’m alright.” He watches me and waits for permission, for however much he might hate me, I am his elder.

“What? Spit it out.”

“You would’ve come even alone right?” He spits the coin out, his flat forehead is shiny in the nearness of the fire. He is crouched on his hams and his naked knees. “I mean everyone else chickened out, except me and you. But even if I hadn’t come…” He shakes his head. “Why?”

“You know why.”

“No.” He says it long, like a cow. “I mean. I know about your sister. The medicine. The treatment and stuff. But Seabass said he was gonna help you and I’m sure he’ll figure it out. He has money too.”

“What’s your point?”

“Well. You didn’t have to do any of this. I mean even if you needed the money, you didn’t have to do it like this. You’re not--you’re not like us.” I stare at him and he fumbles with the ends of his shoelaces. “You know what I mean. You’re smart. So...why? Why this?”

“Well what about you?”

“I told Stacy Sue I would.” He says, quietly. “I wanna get her something. With my share. Something nice.”

I scoff. “And what? She’ll come running to you with open arms?”

“Fuck you.”

“What makes you think she’ll even take it? What makes you think she even knows you exist?”

Of course I see the fist coming before the thought of violence even enters his mind. I grab his wrist midway, twist it and force it behind his back. I push him to the ground and press his cheek to the dirt. It is so easy with my strength. So simple to apply another few pounds of pressure and snap something. Crush him like a cockroach. And for a moment the exercise of this power is like ice against sweating skin, so satisfying. I release him. There are two wet stains on the dirt, where his tears and sweat have mixed. He remains lying there, hiding his eyes and breathing.

“Do you even like her?” He asks.

“Nope.”

He picks himself up and brushes the wet dirt from his face. He looks at me with renewed hatred and I almost tell him then, what I want for him and Stacy Sue; how much I love them both. But the moment passes and my eyes return to the flames.

“It’s so I can forget.”

“...forget what?”

I can’t look at him. In the burning of the blackened wood, I see the fires that have washed my parents and my household clean. Lightning strike, they said. And now I live impoverished in a temple, beneath the careful thumb of god, and I wonder: did He miss the first time? The smoke stings my eyes and I close them and I feel the weight of my sister’s body on my shoulders, the feel of her naked legs. But it is nothing, just the wind.

“Go back to sleep.” I say. “I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

 ---

We find a lizard patrol on the third day and ponder whether to attack. Courier wants to move on. I don’t know whether its from a sense of mercy or just a kind of warped professionalism. But Hal and Lazy-eye have blood on their minds and so we fight. Their method is cold, bereft of elements such as revenge or justice or even greed. The truth is that they are simply bored.

The carnage is incredible. There are seven of them and five of us. Four full grown lizards at heights of 6 to 7 feet, half-naked, wielding crude weapons of stone made deadly by their brutal strength and by their poison. They carry a dead stag between their shoulders. Three of them are smaller; perhaps children and fathers on a hunting trip.

Lazy-eye and Courier hide among the trees and fire stones and bolts. Hal goes out screaming with his sword. Lazy-eye hits one in the mouth with a quarry and the lizard’s teeth and the muscles of his cheek blow out in an explosion of gore. Courier is the real killer. His compact crossbow fires seven inches of steel at three hundred feet per second with a margin of error in the centimeters. Two of the bigger ones get bolts through their eyes before Hal even reaches them. The last big one makes a stand, shouting at the younger ones to run, but we are waiting for them. Norman and I.

I slip the crystal in my mouth, lathering it with saliva and tasting a harsh bitterness which forces me to spit it out again. A wave of strength passes through my flesh and in the killing of these primitives I feel a helium high. I throw my knife and catch the first in the chest, the straight center of the sternum. I seize his throat and tear apart with my bare hands the firm flesh of his neck and shoulders as though I broke off soft bread. I catch the others when they run and I do likewise. I shuck their heads from their spines, neck and all, like the cork from a bottle and blood pours into my hands and feet like black wine and I scream.

Later, Hal admonishes me for getting their poisonous blood on my hands but he does so cautiously and softly. Norman, who stood paralyzed during my slaughter, does not speak or look at me at all. The others marvel at me. I wait alone until the powers fade, staring at a train of ants that carry the pieces of my enemy into their mound. I must remember to thank Seabass. I begin to wonder: what if I ingested a portion of this crystal. Would this strength become mine?

We make camp and burn the bodies in a pit. The smell of their burning flesh is strangely pleasant, like the smell roasted corn. Norman spends the night carving javelins from the gathered limbs of trees, giving me a dead-eyed stare all the while. They are afraid of me, Lazy-eye, the man in armor, Norman, the children at the orphanage, Sarah, even Stacy Sue sometimes. Even Courier gives me a wide berth when we begin the endless hike anew in the dawn. Only my sister is fearless but she must never see me in this way; I am all she has.

---

We come to the caves. Water flows from a high place into a gulch which forms a murky pool at its base. Behind the skipping water, there is a tunnel which leads into the hollows. We stop to wash ourselves and to sup and when the sun is not so high we light our oil lamps and go inside. Alien smells give us pause; the sweet fragrance of freesias mixed with the stench of sulfur and the charged smell of nitrous fire, the aftermath of thunderbolts. There are marks on the walls and on the muddy floor, left by an intelligent hand. Cryptic symbols and footprints with toes as large as my feet; signs which furrow Courier’s brow and make Hal draw his sword. The tunnel moves in a steady incline and as we go deeper and we hear the echoed screams of something that trembles our bladders.

“Light.” Says Lazy-eye, whose eyes are best among us. “Left.”

Our heads turn. There is a faint pale blue illumination, hardly discernible from illusion. We follow it. The smells grow stronger, wrapped up with the stench of feces. We come to a cavern wide enough for four men abreast and thrice as long. The lights come from a fluorescent moss whose brightness oscillates in the synchronized rhythm of a pulse. A bench and a table are set against one wall. A basin has been dug on the floor of one corner, dry as paper, with a fist-sized hole for a drain. On the other side, shelves have been dug out and a few books rest haphazardly inside them. Adjacent to that is side-room, dark and without any trace of the luminous fungi. On the table there are glass tubes and instruments, beakers and black iron cauldrons, rusted ring-stands and leather funnels and broken jars of powders and pastes and preserves. The smell came from these things.

“Must be the lab.” Says Lazy-Eye, thumbing through the books. He puts them back and I take them. A set of experimental journals, something to bring back to Seabass. I slip them in my bag. Courier returns from the side-room. Lazy-eye raises his chin at him in question.

“Growing something.” Courier says. “Troll shit.”

“I thought the smell was just you.” Says Lazy-eye. Courier doesn’t laugh. Hal sniffs at the powders and pastes and judging them either dangerous or useless he does not experiment further. Norman keeps guard at the entrance, peering out into the darkness, his throwing hand white in the tightness of his grip.

“Alright, guess we keep going then.” Says Hal.

“The place is clear.” Says Courier. “Job’s done.”

“Fuck that, we got only four diamonds this trip.”

“Job’s. Done.” Says Courier.

“The job’s fucking done when I say it’s done.”

“Uh, guys.” Says Norman.

Courier steps up to Hal’s face and bears down on him, taller than him by half a foot. Hal’s sword is already out. “I want my cut now.”

“You get your cut with the rest of us.”

“Guys, I think I hear something.” Says Norman.

“I killed two. I get two.”

“Get the fuck outta my face.”

“Guys, I think--” There’s a quiet flitting sound, and my body moves before I can understand it. I shove Norman to the ground. I think he’s been hit but suddenly it’s hard to breathe. I look down.
An arrow sticks out of my stomach. Everyone hugs the walls. Hal and Lazy-eye inch toward the entrance from opposite sides. Norman and Courier carry me to the bench and open my shirt.“It missed the important stuff.” Says Courier, kneeling and pressing at specific spots around the wound. He checks my eyes but I don’t know why, I can see him just fine.

“Is he gonna be OK?” Says Norman.

Courier sighs. “It’s poison.”

“What?” And in Norman’s voice I hear the frayed chords, the sincerity despite all that’s between us and I close my eyes. We could’ve been brothers.

“They’ve got us pinned.” Says Lazy-eye. “They’ll start using smoke soon.”

I break the shaft of the arrow and rise. “I’ll clear a path.” There is a brief silence as their eyes fall to the growing bloodstain and finally Hal nods and throws me the shield on his back.

“Wait, stop.” Says Norman, holding my shirt-sleeve. “What are you doing?” He whispers. I hand him my bag and Courier passes me his shortsword.

“Right behind you.” Courier says. I nod, wincing as I draw the blade. Already my fingers have gone numb. I remember Seabass’s lectures. A neurotoxin, relatively slow-acting in humans but with a certainty of death. Once it reaches the lungs and the heart…

Norman is crying, dragging the tears away with his fists. I have the sudden impulse to strike him, hard, box his ears. He should’ve stayed behind with the others. Still a child, still all of them children. I don’t hit him. I put the bag on his shoulders. “Make sure Seabass gets those books.” His chest heaves and I touch his throat. “This is good. Now you’ll have Stacy Sue to yourself. What you always wanted, right?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“This is not your fault. Do not carry that in you Norman Garp.” He swallows and I see again my sister’s eyes, shut tight with a faith I cannot equal. Perhaps I will see her again in dreams. “Watch over my sister if you can. I have some money…”

“It’ll be done. I swear it.” He says.

“They’re smoking up.” Says Lazy-eye and I too can smell it. I turn away and I put the crystal in my mouth, and hold it there, resisting both the impulse to swallow and to spit it out. Power pours through me like sacred libations. I heft the shield to guard my face and I charge.

Were these my choices? Arrows clunk against the thick wood of the shield, a spear, a stone. Is it Abraham that charges now? They adjust their aim and fire again. Was it Abraham that threw himself upon Norman? An arrow bores my thigh and chips bone, but there is no pain. Was it Abe that killed those lizardlings, that came here at all? I am upon them now, my sword rending the smoke from their fires as it rives their knees and necks and elbows. My strength is enormous, my shoulders at last replete with such vim that the lightness is like flight itself. Is it I who moves this hand? Is it Abraham that takes this breath and this stroke and then these lives? Or was it all the same lightning strike, played slow, from the beginning? I dance in chains.

There are too many of them. A stroke falls upon my shield and shatters it. I plunge my sword into the offender's mouth and rip the top of his jaw and head away. A spear breaks my shoulder and hangs like a loose nail behind me. I do not bow. The stone of strength still in my mouth and gives me ready supply, mixing its contents with my spit and my blood. How many have I killed in the dying smokes of their fires? I cannot tell. More come from the entrance, more from the deeps; perhaps they had been waiting for us.

Hal is suddenly beside me, metal skin glinting in the red heat of their coals. Together we clear a space, their throwers and archers, the kobolds, are slain and bigger lizards must charge us now. Courier and Lazy-eye slide between us and throw bolts and quarries over our shoulders. Norman hands them more ammunition as they need it, occasionally throwing one of his javelins.

By the narrowness of these fissures the game becomes a play of endurance rather than numbers and, whether by the crystal, or by the poison or by the simple abandon of reason I am inexhaustible. A lizard bites down on my shoulder and before he can shake his jaws and divide me I drive my sword through his neck and lever it from his body. The head hangs on to me, comically, like a pauldron, the teeth jammed deep into my flesh, perhaps adding to the poison that pervades it. I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything.

“Clear! The path is clear!” Says Hal. Courier and I hold what forces remain as the rest retreat back to the entrance. When they are gone he touches my shoulder. “Let’s go.” I nod and take a step back. Despite all the wounds and the poison in my veins, I feel lucid. Maybe the crystal is keeping the poison at bay, healing my wounds. I begin to think I might see my sister again and I almost laugh at how much this hope renews me, how foolish I’ve been. But the lesson is learned and my salvation is at hand.

My sister is all I have.

The tunnels shake with a scream that cracks the walls and a full grown troll comes barrelling. At 12 feet tall he must crouch on his hands and lumber like a great ape. His body is hairless and covered in scabs and scar tissue. His eyes are small and of the dull gray of blind creatures. He hunts in the dark by scent and noise alone, with dog-like nose and ears. His speed is incredible despite his size and within a few seconds he has crushed half the lizards between us with bare, enormous hands. Six-digited, four fingers and two thumbs, each strong enough to cave ribcages and skulls.

Courier grabs my arm and pulls me, but I remain. “We have to run.” He says.

“We won’t make it. Tunnel’s too long. He’s too fast. It’s probably already nightfall outside.”

“We have to try.”

I wrench the severed lizard head from my shoulder and toss it on the ground. The chips of teeth hold in my blood. “I’ll hold him as long as I can.”

“That’s a troll.” He says; he offers no other argument.

The lizards attempt to mount a defense. Three of them attack the troll at once. The first actually manages to stab him in the stomach with a spear. The troll grabs the heads of the other two and squeezes them with his two thumbs until their brain matter pops out from their eyes and ears. Then he pulls the spear out and his wounds shut and begin to heal. The lizard tries to run, but the troll catches up to him and dashes his body against the ground so hard that his limbs blow out of their sockets and go flying.

“Go now.” I take my stance. Courier loads a bolt into his crossbow and remains where he is.

The troll kills the rest with disinterest, in the way a child might destroy a line of ants. He screams again and from this distance the noise is enough to rupture my eardrums. I hear a sharp pop and then nothing. Courier fires. Even in the dark his aim is true. The bolt goes straight into the troll’s nose, taking away his primary sense but in the confined spaces of the tunnels, this gives us little advantage.

The troll plucks the bolt out. The nose, a complex and sensitive organ, will take longer to heal. He races blind, punching the earth, listening for movement. The first hit misses completely and leaves his midsection exposed. I roll under his arm, stab upward into his stomach, slide the blade across, open his guts, and then roll back. His hairless skin is like rubber, thick and flexible. He clutches his stomach, forcing the ropes of intestines inside his body as the wound scabs over and begins to heal.

Courier yells something, but I can’t hear him.. He leaps to the side and fires a bolt into the troll’s left ear. He points to the smoke and I understand. I step back and grab one of the red, smoking coals in the lizard’s fire. It burns my hand but there’s no pain. The troll again rips the arrow out of its head, fearless of such wounds in the safety of this dark. It launches a fist blindly in Courier’s direction, misses by a foot, then rears back for a second blow.

I run behind it and slash the back of its knees. It loses balance and falls to one foot and I jam the flaming coal into the open wound. It screams again and this time the wound does not close--not until the stone is ripped out.

He flips around, an unexpectedly quick motion that catches me by surprise. He reaches for me, his nose is partially healed and he can sense me again. I try to jump away but I trip and the fat fingers close around my right leg and crush everything below the knee into soup. I cannot move. I cannot hear my own screams. The troll grabs my whole body in his enormous hand and raises me, ready to crush me as he did the lizards. I brace myself and my eyes are flooded by tears, by visions of my sister, by my whole life.

I do not die. The troll drops me and turns around. Courier has thrown coals at the back of his head, holding them easily in his gloved hands. Fool. He should’ve run. He runs now but it’s too late, the troll is too fast. He grabs him and slams him against the floor, stepping on him over and over until he is uniform with the earth. A bloodstain.

Then he comes for me again.

I bite into a quarter of the crystal and swallow it. Nothing happens. The troll takes his time, his small gray eyes and his nose search out my living scent with a satisfied air. I try to lift myself up, but the power is gone from my body. I don’t want to die. I plead with invisible gods. Just let me carry her one more time. I cry and scream.

The changes are so painful that I almost lose consciousness. My flesh deforms, my skin ruptures as the muscles burst through them, bleeding and heaving and bubbling solid. A new leg shoots out from my knee, disproportionate to my body, too large, too strong. I can suddenly hear myself scream again. The troll steps back, unable to comprehend this new emotion, so foreign to him, the master predator. It is fear. My heart stops. My lungs collapse and then expand beyond my ribs, breaking them apart, then new ribs grow to their mold. A new heart starts to beat, slow and powerful. My bones break and regenerate and rearrange themselves to the new muscles. My teeth shatter and grow and shatter again and grow again. I am 7 feet tall. I am 8 feet tall. I am 10 feet tall.

I lose my mind. Higher thinking disappears into a cloud of primitive instinct. The troll roars and throws his fist at me. I duck and grab his wrist with one hand and his skull with the other and bite down on his elbow and rip out his arm and throw it behind me. I lift his whole body by the neck and punch his skull until it caves. I throw the limp body to the ground and begin eating the severed arm, ripping chunks of rubbery fat and flesh and swallowing without bothering to chew. I eat some of the lizards.

The troll heals. I kill him again. He heals I am there to kill him again and again and again until I grow bored. Then I eat him too. Hours have passed and I can smell the scent of still more flesh outside. I follow it a long ways through the tunnels and then through the forest and when dawn breaks, I come upon the fires and tents of the adventurers with murder and hunger in my mind. I see Norman Garp, screaming. I reach for him. And suddenly my sister’s smile.

---

I awake to the soft heat and weight of my sisters body. She sleeps on my chest, with her arms around my neck. I think I am dead, but if this be the dream, it is enough. I wrap my arms, which ache to move like I had scraped the nerves through a grater, around her and she rouses.

She doesn’t realize and almost goes back to sleep, then she bolts up. She sees my eyes, open and watery, for then I know this is not a dream. I have survived. I have returned whole with the lesson intact. At that last moment, it was her that saved me from a terrible sin. She stares at me a long while and begins to cry and I hold her and kiss her hair and she hits me and curses me. “Never again.” She says.

“Never again.” I say.

And in the distant skies there is a flash of lightning and then rain. And suddenly my shoulders are unburdened.